Anastasia (8 page)

Poor Alexei is terribly upset, because he wants to appear beside Papa before the crowds, but he can’t walk even a single step. Papa is determined that he’ll appear tomorrow anyway.

5/18 August 1914

Everybody is going absolutely wild, so happy to be Russian and so happy to have a tsar like Papa to lead us to victory. When we arrived here yesterday, Papa made an impressive speech at the Kremlin. We were all wearing our best dresses and hats and jewels, except Mama’s sister Ella, who is the abbess of a convent here in Moscow and wore a plain gray habit. A Cossack soldier carried Alexei.

Then we all went to Assumption Cathedral, where Mama and Papa were crowned a long time ago, to pray before the icons and the tombs of important dead Russians. There was always much excitement and deep emotion.

I can hardly wait to see old Cousin Willy beaten!

9/22 August 1914

Ts. S.

We’re happy to be back home, because a scary thing happened to Alexei while we were in Moscow. He and M. Gilliard decided to go for a drive in the country in a motorcar. But hundreds of people recognized the tsarevitch and tried to get close enough to touch him. Finally some policemen rescued them from the jostling crowds, but Alexei was terrified, and Mama was angry at M. Gilliard for sneaking off like that.

13/26 August 1914

Papa has made a big decision: He’s changing the name of St. Petersburg, which sounds German, to Petrograd. It means the same thing in Russian.

Everyone is very patriotic, and no one more than Papa. That’s why the telegram from Father Grigory made him so angry. Father Grigory, who is still recovering from the assassin’s attack, sent Papa a wire, which Anya delivered to him. I was there when Anya rushed into Mama’s boudoir. “Father Grigory urged Nicky not to go to war,” Anya cried. Then she said Papa was so angry, he tore the telegram into a dozen pieces.

Mama tried to calm Anya down until she could find out from Papa what was going on. Usually Papa and Mama agree with everything Father Grigory says, but not this time. Papa says Father Grigory has no business giving such advice and should stick to being a holy man.

23 August/5 September 1914

St. Petersburg
Petrograd

It’s hard to remember that the name has been changed.

I was afraid I’d miss everything, being out at Tsarskoe Selo, because I heard from Gleb Botkin that every day here is filled with the sound of men marching off to war. But dear Aunt Olga proposed that OTMA should observe this stirring sight. She brought us into the city in her carriage so that we could witness the spectacle of our brave soldiers marching down Nevsky Prospect to the railway station, where they board trains headed for the front. There were lots of wives and children weeping and waving and cheering as their husbands and fathers went off to war. It was sad but thrilling.

24 August/6 September 1914

Luncheon at Grandmother’s at Gatchina Palace. She forbade all talk about the war and instead turned her bright eyes in my direction and asked me to tell her about my study of French poetry.

That
was a disaster, of course. But after luncheon, when we went back to Aunt Olga’s, it was a different story. All the young men talked of nothing but the war. Lieutenant Boris plans to take his dress uniform with him when he leaves for the front, so he’ll be ready for the victorious parade through the streets of Berlin. No one seems to give the least thought that he might get wounded or even killed. They expect to be home by Christmas.

28 August/10 September 1914

Ts. S.

Papa left this morning for
Stavka
, the headquarters of the army. He’s going there to consult with Grandfather’s cousin, Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaievitch, the commander-in-chief of the armies. Papa says it’s important to keep up the morale of the men with visits from the tsar, and also to make sure that all is going well. So far we have lost one big battle but won a bigger one.

30 August/12 September 1914

Mama has shocked us all. Three weeks ago she ordered the Catherine Palace to be turned into a hospital for wounded soldiers, and now she’s decided to become a Red Cross nurse! We’re all amazed because Mama has never done this sort of work before, and her own health is never very good. Only a few weeks ago she had to be carried ashore from the
Standart
in a wheelchair, and now she’s going to be a nurse!

1/14 September 1914

I’m spitting mad. Not only is Mama training to be a nurse, but so are Olga and Tatiana. But not Mashka and me. No! We are too
young
!

Mashka is so good, always so sweet about everything, and she has tried to make me feel better about being left out. “At least it’s both of us, the Little Pair,” she said, and then suggested that maybe we could find other good work to do for the soldiers. She’s such an angel, I’m not sure we’re truly sisters.

Mama says indeed we can be of great help, we can visit the sick and injured. But — we will not get to wear uniforms, and I did so much want to!

6/19 September 1914

Papa’s home again. Things seem almost normal when he’s here.

22 September/5 October 1914

Papa is back at
Stavka
, and we immediately started missing him horribly. Mashka and I went to Anya’s for tea. She has such a sweet little house in the park near our palace. Father Grigory was there, completely recovered and dressed in a bright yellow silk shirt. He poured tea and talked about things that seemed to interest everyone but me. Anya hangs on every word he says.

27 September/10 October 1914

Our life here has turned completely upside down. We’re not used to having Papa away so much, and Mama is becoming a different person. She used to lie in bed until noon, but now she’s up every morning for seven o’clock Mass, breakfast at eight, and by nine o’clock she and Olga and Tatiana are dressed in their gray uniforms and white aprons with a red cross on the bib, and they’re on their way to the hospital. And they’re gone for the whole day!

Meanwhile Mashka and I stay here with our tutors, and Gilliard, Gibbes, and Petrov complain they have never seen such inattentive pupils as Mashka and Alexei and I. This is because we all are yearning to be somewhere else: Alexei at
Stavka
with Papa, and we two leftover sisters at the hospital with Mama.

Every time Mama finds one of her friends with an extra palace or mansion, she shames them into giving it to her for a hospital. She tells them, “You must do this for Holy Russia.” Under her direction, eighty-five palaces have been made into hospitals for wounded soldiers and ten trains have been made into traveling emergency clinics.

Mama and the Big Pair are still in training. It will be another month until they are certified war nurses, but they are already in the thick of it. At teatime they come home filthy and exhausted, and they swallow their tea and gobble up their bread and biscuits before they have even bathed and dressed properly. Then they go on with their tales of terrible bloodshed and gore — fingers taken off because of poison in the blood; smashed bones; awful-smelling wounds; men shot to bits who still hang on to life.

In the evenings after dinner, Mama writes pages to Papa, and so do my sisters.

I have nothing to write about to Papa except to tell him how much we love him and miss him.

30 September/13 October 1914

Anya brought Tatiana a little French bulldog. He’s named Ortino. He is absolutely adorable! Mama’s dog Eira hates him passionately.

My sisters play cards by the hour, but I find it dull. I’d rather paste pictures in my album to show Papa when he comes home.

7/20 October 1914

The only thing even faintly amusing these days is Ortino, who races around like a mad thing and sometimes leaves small piles of you-know-what on the carpet, so that we must always keep a little shovel handy. Such bad manners! (Even Eira is appalled!)

15/28 October 1914

Seven classes today! It’s just too much. How do they expect me to keep all of this in my head? Professor Petrov is reading us a story by Turgenev, his favorite writer. He thinks I’m taking notes, but I’m really writing in my diary and will begin a letter to Papa if the professor doesn’t catch me first!

Ortino has eaten one of Mama’s shoes and is in disgrace — again.

30 October/12 November 1914

Mama, Olga, and Tatiana have completed their nurse’s training. We’re so proud of them! Mashka and I visit the wounded soldiers at Feodorovsky Gorodok, a small palace that Papa had built in the imperial park to resemble a traditional Russian village. It’s been made into a small hospital. The soldiers are far from home and very lonely. Some can’t even write their own names, poor things, peasants from the countryside who never learned their letters, and they ask us to write home to their mothers and sweethearts. We also read to them and feed those who are too weak to feed themselves. They’re so grateful for every small thing we do.

3/16 November 1914

Olga’s nineteenth birthday. She was too busy for even a tiny party.

5/18 November 1914

Mama is worried about her brother, our uncle Erni, the grand duke of Hesse, who lives in Germany and is an officer in the German army. They write to each other through their cousins in Sweden. People are saying awful things about the Germans, and some even say that because Mama was German, she must be awful, too. “All my heart is bound to this country,” she says, and it doesn’t matter where she was born. How dreadful people are.

8/21 November 1914

On the imperial train

We’re on our way to
Stavka
to see Papa. He’s back at headquarters after a visit to the southern Caucasus to inspect our troops who are fighting the Turks. Anya came with us. She wouldn’t miss a chance to see what
Stavka
is like.

10/23 November 1914

Stavka

Papa was delighted to see us and could not give us enough hugs and kisses. We’re having a terrific time. Olga finally got a chance to celebrate her birthday. Nothing like last year!

Stavka
is southwest of Petrograd on the Dnieper River, in the middle of a dense forest. Several army trains have been pulled up in the midst of the birch and pine trees, a roof put over them, and wooden sidewalks laid down. It’s really quite cozy, like a little village.

At noon the motorcars drive us to a mansion in the town of Mogilev to have luncheon with the officers. I tease Mashka about finding a husband here.

“Don’t be vile,” she says, but she’s blushing. She doesn’t suspect I’ve read her diary and know she dreams of a soldier husband and twenty children.

It’s grand to visit, but Papa seems even more worried than before. So many men have been killed, far more than anyone expected, and now it seems that the war won’t be over by Christmas after all.

28 November/11 December 1914

Ts. S.

We are all outraged! The Holy Synod of the Church has banned Christmas trees because they’re originally a German custom. Mama has written to Papa about it. She says it’s narrow-minded to outlaw something that brings so much pleasure to children and to the wounded men in the hospital. But Anya says there’s not much she and Papa can do, because so many people call Mama Nemka, “the German woman,” and believe she’s a traitor. This makes me terrifically angry, but there’s nothing I can do.

20 December 1914/2 January 1915

Aunt Olga came today and told us that the windows of German bakeries in Petrograd have been smashed. I remember how I wanted to go into a dear little candy shop on the Nevsky Prospect, but now it has been destroyed because the owners are German. How awful it all is!

One good thing: I don’t have to study my German lessons anymore! Of course that still leaves Russian, English, and French. What a bore. Why couldn’t I have been born already
knowing
all these languages!

Christmas Eve 1914

Papa is home. It’s so good to have us all gathered here together again, the way it used to be. As usual, Papa wanted
kutia
, a kind of cereal made of rice and raisins, served in a bowl set in the middle of a mound of hay that symbolizes the Holy Nativity in the manger. Then we had our Christmas Eve dinner: almond soup and poached carp.

Before, we always stepped outside to offer greetings to Papa’s subjects who had gathered in front of Alexander Palace to wish us a joyous Christmas. But we’re not making any public appearances like those of last summer, because many people are upset and angry. They thought the war would be over by now, and they’re blaming Papa.

They also blame everything German. Mama’s friend Lili Dehn says the orchestras in Petrograd are forbidden to play music by any German composers. So when we got together to put on our little musical program, I wasn’t allowed to play that pretty song I’ve practiced so hard: It’s called “Für Elise,” by Beethoven. And Tatiana may not play the “Moonlight Sonata” by the same composer.

But I can’t seem to help
whistling
“Für Elise” and don’t even realize I’m doing it. Mama says it’s naughty, and that I must stop.

Christmas 1914

Mama is smiling again because Father Grigory has come to visit us before he returns to his village in Siberia. Papa treats him very politely, even though it’s well known that Father Grigory tried to convince Papa to stay out of the war.

Lots of gifts for everybody. Mama gave us each an icon of the Blessed Virgin, and Papa gave us bracelets set with pearls. I tinted photographs that I’ve taken of the family for Papa to carry with him when he goes back to
Stavka
.

After dinner, Alexei entertained us with his balalaika. All Russian music and very cheering.

28 December 1914/10 January 1915

Something odd is going on here. I think Mashka is falling in love with one of the palace guards. I catch her gazing out the window at one in particular. I must find out his name.

2/15 January 1915

Awful news: Anya Vyrubova was in a terrible train wreck. Mama and Papa got word that she was hurt so badly, she may die. They rushed to Petrograd to be with her in her last hours. We are all praying for her.